Notice:
I know ‘Theft and Security’ is already on the roadmap, but this is a lot more than just a crime suggestion. This post does make mention of current and upcoming features outside of just ‘theft and security’, and it is not a mistake.
New York is well known for a few reasons, one of which is Crime. It stands to reason that ‘Theft and Security’ are be one of the many things added in the future, but i haven’t found any kind of concrete description of what ‘Theft and Security’ actually entails. The only thing i can assume about the future feature is that it’ll add a chance that the player would be stolen from and some security measures that they can take to minimize the risk of being stolen from.
Its fine if that’s all there is to this feature, but there’s so much more you can do with this concept.
So I want to propose this, I am it calling “Of Crime and Progress”. I guess you would call it a more in-depth focus on what could be achieved with this game in general.
First, ill focus on a few, small changes that can be made to the existing game and explain why the would benefit the game as a whole. These are just general changes that will change how the game is played without the inclusion of crime.
- Delayed payment
- Tangible Cash and Debt cards
- Generating Employee Backgrounds
- In Store Managers
- Seeing Deliveries Happen
- Oppening Various Bank accounts/better money management system
- A Scheduling Calander
- Developing Franchises
- Places that boost happieness when visited.
Now I’ll explain what all this means.
These changes are purely to alter how the gameplay flows.
Delayed payments would be there to force the player to plan ahead more. In the beginning of the tutorial/campaign, the player is told to start off working at a grocery store. They’ll make a few hundred bucks after each shift there before quitting to open their own buisness, but I think that’s a wasted opportunity. I think the player should be a certian number of shifts the player has to do before they get their pay in full (lets say 1 week worth of shifts as an example), like how pay checks are normally handled in the buisness world.
Delayed payments also refers to delaying when rent and salaries are paid, as well as when buisness profits get put into a bank account.
This leads into the idea of tangible cash needing to be moved around, along with debit cards and different bank accounts. A certian percentage of all purchases made in a day would be made with cash instead of some kind of Card. Cash would need to be physically taken to a bank before it can be used by the player. Player can either deposit the cash themselves or they can hire some company the player uses to regulaly do that (or the player could establish their own security company if they grow big enough). (Im not suggesting accurate credit cards since that would be an annoying system to try and deal with in a game.)
As of writing this, i find it a lot harder to optimise my earnings with just the data given to us. I actually had to make a spreadsheet to organize it all, which was a pain to do. So my suggestion is simple: let give the player a weekly expense sheet rather than a daily recipt of earnings. To further help the player deal with money management, they would can open different bank accounts to better organize and track their funds. Having the ability to open a seperate bank account for any reason would help in the money management. This would only be useful when the player has expanded their portfolio to like 10 or 15 buissnesses or when the player starts franchise their own stores.
Seeing deliveries happen would be immersive, but it would be better if the player’s actions affected delivery results. If the player accidently crashes into a delivery truck, then the goods that were supposed to go to their stores would get delayed.
Interactable sheduling calenders would let the player see when payments and deliveries are scheduled. That way the player can stagger things out and organize things easily and efficently.
More in depth employement. What we have is ok, but can be improved. If each employee had a randomly generated backgrounds and traits associated with them, it would allow the player to be more invested in the buisness. The traits given could also impact the employee’s work and abilities. Also, managing the timesheet is straightforward (if not a little bit tedious), but it would be nice to have a manager who would automatically manage the time sheet for a store whenever you add a new employee to there.
Lastly, there needs to be more forms of recreation in the game. The happieness bar is really tempremental on the best of days… so some ways to offset that would be great.
All the changes listed above would make gameplay and player decisions a lot more deliberate, allowing for players to be strategic in order to grow their empire.
Now these next suggestions all relate to crime in some way. Also, it should be noted that the some of suggestions from before were made with crime in mind, but they all work even without crime.
- Muggers, thieves, and robbers
- Criminal organizations
- Theiving employees
- Illegal activities
- Liscenses
- Police presance
- Security Companies
- Guns and weapons (along with being able to open a gunstore)
Muggers, Thieves, and Robbers all do the same thing: steal physical cash away from you and your buisnesses. The chances of the player getting robbed depend on police presence, which can change from neighborhood to neighborhood. Getting mugged is simple: the player is confronted in the street by someone with a weapon, and they can either give the mugger all the physical cash they have on hand, or try to use a weapon to scare the mugger off. Thieves can either steal merchandise from the player’s stores as a customer, or they can be employees stealing physical cash from the register. Finally, Robbers are bombastic and the hardest hitting. They will use weapons to rob either a physical store or a cash transport. The latter would have a higher chance of happening and would cause the store to be closed for a couple of days.
Criminal organizations would add variety to the streets of New York. Their presance would have an effect on lawlessness in areas, and opening a store on their turf would earn a visit from these mobsters. There would be protection money, criminal fronts, and the trade of illegal goods in these areas. This would also allow the player to take part in illegal acts in order to gain temporary satisfaction for a monitary cost as well as a legal risk.
Liscences for buying certian goods such as guns, liquor, and armored cars.
Police presance also affects the likelyness of beimg caught doing illegal acts.
Players can mitigate the dangers of crime by hiring or opening their own security company. From surveilance too rapid response teams, the player would be able to use that to help secure their assets.
While it would be cool for the player to have the option to be a criminal, i think there would have to be a seperate system developed solely for the “criminal path”.
- Different ways of hiring (you wouldn’t use a recruiting agency to hire a mobster),
- Different cash system just for criminals (An example would be Cartel Tycoon, which uses Washed and Unwashed cash as seperate resources with their own uses)
- Different uses for buisnesses (using certian types of shops as fronts for washing money or selling illegal substances)
- Different Crime-centric Jobs (drug peddlers, mobsters, ect.)
All that, plus a dynamic system including police/private security response times. It would be a bit unreasonable to ask for that in addition too all the other stuff mentioned.
Thank you for reading, and feel free too comment suggestions as well as critisisms.
All I ask is that discussion be kept civil~ish.
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